Recent events in Colombia have startled all but a handful of knowledgeable analysts. The unthinkable has actually been unfolding before our very eyes: A sovereign Latin American republic is literally at war with los narcos. The question now being asked is whether the Colombian scenario will soon be repeated elsewhere. Will Latin America's current drug fiefdoms become the cocaine kingdoms of the 1990s?
Before addressing this question through an analysis of events in Bolivia and Peru, it must be emphasized that foreign demand, emanating primarily from American and Western European consumers, is the very raison d'être of Latin America's narcotics dilemma. It should also be noted that no country in the hemisphere has managed to avoid the multiple impacts of traffic in narcotics. Illicit narcotics have affected virtually every Latin American and Caribbean country--politically, economically, socially, psychologically, and diplomatically. Bolivia is a clear case in point.
South America's poorest country is also the quintessential coca nation: Most Bolivians are involved, either directly or indirectly, in the coca culture. They grow the leaf, ceremonialize it, chew it, drink it, cook it, stomp it, refine it, smoke it, sell it, or seek to eradicate it. Coca's impact on Bolivian culture is such as to render it a vital national resource. Meanwhile, the social impacts of Bolivia's transition from a land of traditional coca chewers to a major producer of cocaine for export have been profound. Estimates vary as to how many individuals are involved in the coca-cocaine cycle, ranging from 200,000 coca farmers and their families to half a million employed in all phases of the enterprise, from cultivation to smuggling. No one, however, debates the role of coca in traditional Indian life or the cocaine boom's negative impacts.
Bolivia's Chapare region, which grows most of the nation's coca, is a classic example. For its native people, the multiple repercussions of the Chapare's cocaine-driven metamorphosis have been profound. Labor shortages have developed in traditional agriculture, with a resultant drop in the production of staple crops. Monetization of coca as a cash crop has eroded mutual support systems based on reciprocal labor patterns. The ecosystem is threatened as processing chemicals are dumped into streams and irrigation ditches. Like the land, the Indian, too, is being corrupted as he becomes part of the vicious, illicit cycle.
Bolivia is now plagued with an escalating drug abuse problem. Overproduction, glutted markets, and law enforcement have combined to spawn the devastating smoking of pitillo, tobacco laced with coca paste. Today's estimated 100,000 young coca-paste addicts may well be only a portent of things to come. The same holds true for drug-related violence and corruption, which are endemic to drug-processing zones.
In macroeconomic terms, the impact of Bolivian narcotics is glaringly obvious: Without drug dollars, the economy, already a basket case, would be virtually bankrupt. U.S. government studies have consistently pegged annual export earnings from coca-cocaine at approximately $1 billion. Admittedly conservative, this figure still leaves illicit drugs far and away Bolivia's largest export and foremost earner of foreign exchange.
No area of the country has remained unscathed by the
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